Peter Pišťanek - The Wooden Village

Sida explodes. She should have seen that coming! People are swine; they get used to living in clover. And Freddy’s no different. When she remembers that only a few weeks ago Freddy was happy enough to be completely prepared to be her assistant completely unpaid! But now it’s just a boring routine to him. At first, he was happy just to lick her arse. Today he wants two hundred, and tomorrow he’ll ask for three hundred. All right: she’s no bitch. She says, “A hundred and fifty a day.”

Eyebrows raised, she looks at her slave.

Freddy mulls over the new offer and something in his tiny brain commands him to accept it. In the end, however, he digs his heels in. “No,” he tells Sida. “It’s all, or nothing. Two hundred.”

“Are you bored with your job?” his mistress asks.

“I’m not bored with my job,” says Freddy. “I love my work, really. But everybody around me is making big money, and I’m not. So I say, give me two hundred! It’s not that much. I was making a thousand a day at the car park.”

“Well then, go back to the car park, if you’re so clever,” says Sida.

They sit for a while silently and watch a perverted porno movie, which they’ve seen a hundred times, projected on the wall.

Sida is disgruntled. She’s not bothered about the money; it’s the principle of the thing. Freddy Piggybank pushes himself in, forces himself on her as her slave and even signs a contract, and now he’s got too big for his boots. He should be purring with happiness every time his mistress looks at him.

Freddy shrugs. For him it’s not the principle so much as the money that counts. He hasn’t enough to live on. He can’t save. “Two hundred a day!”

“It didn’t take you long to get bored with me,” says Sida bitterly. “Money means more to you than obedience and devotion to your mistress! Right, pack your bags and clear off, you perverted pig!”

Freddy can’t understand; he can’t believe his ears. He smiles hesitantly. “Didn’t you hear?” Sida says. “Bugger off!”

Freddy shakes his head. This isn’t what he wanted. Not ending like this. After all, it can all be sorted out peacefully.

Sida nods. “Exactly. Peacefully.” So Freddy Piggybank can peacefully fuck off. Sida Tešadíková has just finished with him. She doesn’t need Freddy Piggybank; he needs her.

Freddy gets up. He may be fat and have weird tastes. But he’s not a fat pig. He won’t take any more insults. If Sida tells him to go, he will.

He proudly turns round and marches out of the bar.

He sits in the dressing room, changing his clothes and waiting for the door to open and his mistress to come in and say that she didn’t mean it that way. Nobody enters. Freddy puts on his ordinary clothes and just sits there for a while. Then he decides to go home, regardless of whatever’s waiting for him there.

As he walks out of the Perverts’ Centre , Sida deliberately pretends not to see him. Freddy comes out on the street, rolls up his collar and, in the face of a cold wind, heads for the number 34 bus stop. As he passes the YMCA cinema, the audience is just leaving. Freddy waits by the bus stop, surrounded by satisfied, cheerful, even happy people. The adventures experienced in the cinema have left them with wide-open, radiant eyes. They discuss the film animatedly, with occasional bursts of laughter. Freddy hates them at this moment. How can they be so happy at a time when Freddy is so miserable?

It gradually dawns on him that he has made a mistake. He shouldn’t have pressed Sida so hard; Sida is no Feri Bartaloš! And besides: oh, Sida! Sida!..

* * *

Freddy Piggybank unlocks the gate of his parents’ house, enters the veranda and tries to unlock the door in the dark. He can’t: a key is in the lock inside. Freddy turns his key, and suddenly the door opens and his father appears in the doorway. He gives his perverted son a stern look.

“Is that you?” Father asks.

“It’s me,” answers Freddy, blushes, and lowers his eyes.

“Have you brought the lunch tin and string bag?” asks his father.

This question is a painful reminder to Freddy of his father’s visit to the Perverts’ Centre : it takes him a while to give a positive answer.

“Did you at least like it?” old Mešťánek asks when tears gush from Freddy’s eyes.

“Well, come in then,” says his father in a conciliatory tone, and lets his son in.

“I haven’t said a word to your mother,” the father whispers, as Freddy, breathing hard, puts on his slippers.

Freddy greets his mother, but politely and firmly declines her offer of food and cake. He is suffering too much to want it.

He enters his uncomfortable room, undresses, turns off the light and lies in bed in the dark. He stares at the ceiling with wide-open feverish eyes.

There’s a knock at the door; his father enters. He clears his throat; he doesn’t know how to start. “May I?” he asks and sits down on the bed. He sits for a moment in silence and Freddy doesn’t say a word either.

“I went to where you work,” says Father. “I saw it all. Why did you lie to us?”

Freddy doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing.

“That door-keeper or bouncer, or whoever he was, told me that you had a customer,” Father continues. “What kind of customer was it?”

“Well, a customer…” says Freddy.

“What do you mean?” Father asks. “Are you saying you are a … pervert? A homosexual?”

Old Mešťánek pronounces the last word in a way that suggests that he’s scared of it.

Freddy blushes, unseen in the dark.

“I’m not,” he says.

“Then what sort of a customer was it?” Freddy’s father insists, undeterred.

“Well,” Freddy says, “it an old man, you know. People who come to us like to be whipped…” “To us?” Father focuses on a word. “Who is this ‘US’?”

“Well, it’s us…Sida and me.” “What Sida? Who’s Sida?”

“Sida Tešadíková,” says Freddy. “From Nová Ves.”

“Oh, from Nová Ves, is she?” old Mešťánek nods. “And what about this Sida? I mean, what is it she does?”

“Well…” Freddy reflects. “She whips people who pay her for it.” “And you?”

“I help her,” says Freddy. “I hand her the instruments, assist her, clean up… that kind of thing.” “And what else?”

“Nothing,” says Freddy. “Just that.”

“So you just help her,” his father checks. “You know, Alfred, how can I put it… in a word, there are men who… you see… go with other men… Are you sure you’re not one of them?”

Freddy is so embarrassed he wishes the ground would swallow him.

“Who do you think I am?” he shouts indignantly. “Of course, I’m sure!”

“You know,” his Father says. “I thought you were one of them.”

“I never have been one of them,” says Freddy.

His father sighs with relief. His mood gets noticeably better; the burden weighing for days on his mind has been removed.

“And that Sida?” he asks. “What kind of a girl is she? She probably hasn’t much going for her, if she works in a place like that, has she?”

“She used to be a school teacher,” says Freddy. “She went to university. She’s clever.”

“Really!” his father is incredulous.

“Really,” Freddy insists. “She used to live in Grb. Now she lives in Petržalka.”

“Oh well,” says his Father and stands up. “If you like it… The main thing is you’re not one of those… faggots.”

His father heads for the door.

“And I won’t tell your mother anything,” he promises. “I don’t want her to worry. She probably wouldn’t understand… I mean times have changed. It’s not like in our day… Aren’t you hungry?”